Toys, life and people

Big toy little toy

It’s the summer holidays, which means a lot of kids pouring into the shop with holiday money burning a hole in their pockets. Some have saved a little bit of pocket money all through the year to add to their holiday budget others are happy to just go with the flow and get something nice to play with on holiday. The scenario gets strained sometimes when different siblings have different approaches but amazingly this results in far fewer tantrums and meltdowns than you might expect. My sister and I used to be like this: instead of getting a sweet on a Friday afternoon when my dad picked us up from school I’d always ask if I could get the 30-40p (yes there was a time when you could get a decent sweet for 30p) to put in my bank at home. A year of this (plus some stashed Christmas and birthday money) and I was all set for something really good on holiday, maybe something big like a new lego set, maybe just a bundle of really cool stuff.

Christine (my sister) was different, like most kids she spent her pocket money most weeks and so when the holidays came along she’d get a few pounds to spend on something she liked, that could keep her amused in the caravan if the weather took a turn for the worse. I’d have to ask her now to make sure, but I don’t think she minded much, the toys I got weren’t the kind of thing she liked to play with anyway. Though she was probably aware that my purchases were worth more than hers she seemed happy enough with what she had.

Adults don’t seem as good at this, we see someone close to us with more than us and we feel jealous, not only that but we often try and find ways of making ourselves feel better, like assuming that there is some admirable personality trait that we exhibit through having less (we’re less greedy, less ruthless etc. etc.). Why can’t we just enjoy the things that we’ve got? We earned our money and went to the effort of choosing our possessions (let’s assume we pick them because we like them) so they obviously seemed appealing at the time we purchased them. It’s so peculiar that suddenly that nice new TV in your living room looks outdated and small when you go and visit some friends with a bigger fancier one. Your TV is still the nice one you went to the effort of choosing, chances are you picked it because it suits the place it has in your room and it provides you with entertainment, but this seems to fly out the window when you see that new 50″ flat screen.

It would be easy to think that it’s a sign of the times, that everyone is more materialistic nowadays and that mine and my sister’s attitudes towards each others’ purchases is a thing of the past but this is not so; I see kids every day of the holidays come in and do the same thing. I won’t pretend there isn’t the occasional meltdown of ‘they got more than me!’ but these are surprisingly rare and no more common than they were in the toy shop I worked in more than a decade ago.

Just this morning a young lad and his wee sister came in with holiday money, he bought a big lego set (about £30) and she bought a soft toy (about £6) and neither even batted an eyelid at the other’s purchase. They got what they wanted with what they had and they were happy, fantastic. Again I feel like kids have a lesson to teach us (and as a casual aside I wish Christine all the best with her new gigantic flat screen TV).